Progressive communist

It is perhaps ironic that responsibility for one of the best commercial openings in Cyprus’s history – the exploration of offshore oil and gas fields – rests in the hands of a lifelong communist with no commercial experience, Neoclis Sylikiotis.

But Sylikiotis is, as opponents acknowledge, a highly competent man. And, as he has demonstrated since taking on the portfolio in March, his approach has not been ideological. Critics have questioned the speed with which he has moved, but his approach has been as market-friendly as his opponents on the right would have been.

Sylikiotis has, in short, shown why President Demetris Christofias entrusted his interior minister with the challenge of establishing an industry that may make Cyprus an energy hub in the eastern Mediterranean: Cyprus’s politicians accept that the 53-year-old has safe hands. Sylikiotis is also, for Christofias, a trusted pair of hands. He has been a member of Christofias’s Communist party, AKEL, since he was a teenager and a party official for most of his working life. And he is now one of only two ministers who remain from the first cabinet appointed by Christofias (the other is Sotiroulla Charalambous, the labour minister).

Sylikiotis comes from an AKEL family. His father was active in the party in Limassol, where Sylikiotis was born, and many of his extended family were also members. Some of them – including his wife – have left the party, because of a combination of local issues and a generational shift in left-wing politics. Sylikiotis, though, has remained loyal to the party.

But he has always maintained a degree of independence. One early example was his insistence on studying mechanical engineering at Aachen Polytechnic in West Germany, rather than opting for a social-sciences course at an eastern bloc university, the usual choice of his party contemporaries. To this day, Sylikiotis is said to make a point of maintaining personal contact with progressives outside AKEL, a party that values internal discipline highly.

His own student experience of xenophobia in Germany shaped his firmly progressive views and, in his subsequent rise through the party’s ranks, he has consistently used public platforms to speak out on racism and social issues.

On completing his studies and returning to Cyprus in 1987, Sylikiotis took up the first of a series of paid party positions, initially as head of student and international relations of AKEL’s youth wing. He subsequently became its secretary. In 1995, he became a member and full-time official of AKEL’s central committee. There, his initial focus was on education.

When he was eventually given a taste of ministerial power, in September 2006, it was as interior minister in a coalition government formed by President Tassos Papadopoulos. He did not hold the position for long: after ten months, AKEL left the coalition. Sylikiotis marked his departure in typical fashion, shortly afterwards attending a rally in support of asylum-seekers outside the interior ministry.

He is a strong-willed character, as he demonstrated when he returned to the interior ministry in 2008, after Christofias was elected president. He drove through a range of reforms to Cyprus’s ponderous government processes, radically over-hauling local government and introducing legislation to untangle the town planning process. His efforts related to a common European asylum system and migration in the eastern Mediterranean earned the respect of European peers.

He has a comparable, or greater, challenge as commerce and energy minister. He has to create a structure for a completely new sector to tap Cyprus’s offshore energy resources, working to a short timeline – Cyprus hopes commercial exploitation can begin in 2019. Eventually, Cyprus may provide a more secure supply source for the EU’s gas needs than Russia or the Arab states. In the short and medium term its other energy ambitions are low, but no less challenging for that. Sylikiotis has to revamp an uncompetitive, under-developed energy industry on an island whose main electricity plant was badly damaged by a nearby explosion in July 2011. But, at least, Cyprus is now hitting its renewable-energy targets set by the EU.

Sylikiotis is a hard-working man, willing to put in many extra hours. During Cyprus’s presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers, he has had plenty of work. As minister of trade and industry, he has chaired the EU’s energy council and the trade meetings of the foreign affairs council. Since October, he has also chaired the competitiveness council, taking over from Stavros Malas, who resigned as health minister (a position that included research) to stand as AKEL’s candidate in next February’s presidential election.

The style of the two differs sharply. Malas, a former medical researcher, was able to run meetings affably and efficiently, in part thanks to his fluency in English; Sylikiotis’s English is more limited and he prefers to operate in Greek, which slows the tempo.

He has nonetheless managed to push forward issues such as the Single Market Act and a review of industrial policy in the competitiveness council – and, at Monday’s council (10 December), he brought the decades-long effort to establish a European patent to a successful conclusion. A number of EU officials also give Sylikiotis substantial credit for securing trade ministers’ decision on 29 November to give the European Commission a mandate to open talks with Japan on what would be the EU’s biggest free-trade deal. Going into the meeting, it was a toss-up whether five member states would drop their opposition; officials say that Sylikiotis convinced the Commission to make enough concessions to secure the Council’s approval.

Evidently, Sylikiotis’s left-wing views have not prevented him from seeking consensus. According to one political analyst, Sylikiotis does not seek confrontation. “He is honest and reputable, not given to flights of fancy, neither politically nor personally.” A man with a strong physical presence, Sylikiotis is not a man known for his sense of humour – “he can be heavy going”, the analyst says. But Sylikiotis’s characteristics fitted the brief given to ministers by the man in charge of Cyprus’s presidency, Andreas Mavroyiannis: to be honest brokers and to focus on results.

Sylikiotis has played a disproportionately large role in a presidency that has surprised many by its competence and, in the view of one Council official, has been “the best of the last two years, very well-managed and organised”. He is emerging with his reputation in Cyprus enhanced. That will not help much in the short term: AKEL is likely to lose the presidential elections in February, with the effect that Sylikiotis would lose his post as commerce minister. But Sylikiotis will not go away. He has long been a leading politician. The consensus in Cyprus is that he will remain a big player for years to come.